map

This is my little map of the elements of literature. I've tried to make it as general and uncontroversial as possible, but of course it's impossible to avoid some amount of controversy. The assertion that there are "elements" in something called "literature" that can be "mapped" already raises eyebrows somewhere in academia. Likewise, that there should be only five elements, or only *these* five, causes a new set of problems for some folks. But I think for the purposes of general conversation about the things that are important to include in our discussion of literature, this map serves as at least a rough guide to the territory. Present are Author, Text, Reader, World, and Language. I'm using the term "World" here in the most general sense; it is the Great Thing that contains all the other, lesser things. In this case, I'm featuring a few of these lesser things as of particular interest to theories of literature, namely authors, who write texts; texts, which are written and read; readers, who read texts; and language, which is the medium in which authors write, texts are composed, and readers read.

For some academics, "World" is just another aspect of Language, which contains all things. All the things we talk about, at least. And for these critics, my map seems to make a poorly articulated argument against the centrality of language. I've made "World" and "Language" separate entities, with "Language" subordinate to "World." In other words, I seem to have made a claim that there is an objective world outside of language, which contains language as one of its parts. I do not mean to make such an argument, but I also do not wish to make the reverse argument, that language is all in all and that there is nothing outside of the "Text." I could have drawn my map so that language was on equal footing with the world, encompassing the lower half of the large oval, but this would only have created new problems by creating a central opposition between "World" and "Language" as if these were clearly distinguishable and irreconcilable.

To some extent, the category "World" is also my way of including other "elements" that I haven't featured here. Time, for example, is an aspect of "World" that plays an important role in literature, especially since author and reader may exist centuries apart, a gap traversed by the text. Race, gender, class, Capital, History, and technology are other elements I've not featured, but which constitute important aspects of "World." To give "Language" equal billing with "World" would have given it priority over these other elements and therefore privileged post-structural theories of language over other, equally important academic work.

For English speakers, there is an implied directionality from author to text to reader, since we read from left to right. However, I did not draw arrows along this line because this is not a unilateral relationship. All elements have some degree of influence upon all the others, so that, if I had started drawing arrows, I wouldn't have known where to stop.

The value of this map is that it gives some orientation for understanding the emphases of various theories. New Criticism emphasizes only the text, and makes an effort to exclude all the other elements. Deconstruction emphasizes language to the exclusion of all other elements...or to the absorption and dissolution of all other elements, which is more or less what is meant by "Nothing is outside of the Text." Language is everything. Some theories take more than one element into account. Mimetic theories emphasize the relationship between text and the world. Reader-response criticism focuses on readers and the world, conceived of as a world of other readers forming interpretive communities. And some theories have a particular interpretation of how all the elements work together; Rhetorical theories, for example, understand literature as something authors do with language in texts in order to persuade readers and thereby influence the world.

Creative writing theory is meant to address the needs of authors, to help them better understand what it is that they do and the means by which they do it. For this reason, it will be important to gain an understanding of all these elements from the perspective of the author. What is the author's relationship to the text? To readers? To language? To the world? To authorship, even? These are the most basic questions of creative writing theory, and upon investigation of them, theorists can expect to discover further questions that concern matters of writing practice and pedagogy, matters of practical concern to authors who write and teach.

Investigation of these questions will also necessarily encounter theories of literature (and theories applied to literature) that are written from perspectives other than that of the author. Most Theory, in fact, is theory of interpretation, written from the perspective of the reader. These theories have various ways of addressing the author and thinking about the role of authorship in literary "meaning."

Theories that exclude the author or challenge the status of the author in some way are theories that creative writing theory ought to address as challenges and opportunities. These theories challenge creative writing theory to justify its existence and the validity of its project. In this way, they also provide an opportunity for creative writing theory to strengthen its claims and clarify its position on the author's relationship to the elements of literature emphasized by these challenging theories.

Theories that do not exclude the author still generally understand the author from the perspective of the reader, and so creative writing theorists must exercise caution when appropriating these theories, taking care to reevaluate their treatment of authorship.

Of course, creative writing theory, while drawing on the work of existing theories, need not limit itself to the work of interpretive theorists. Creative writing theory can begin with its own observations of the experience of literature from an author's point of view. It can also draw on work in other fields, such as the work of composition scholars the testimony of working writers about the nature of what they do, and psychological and philosophical treatments of creativity.